You could be walking a whole marathon every fortnight without knowing it

We've never really thought of ourselves as the marathon-running type to be perfectly honest, but new research suggests we might be way more athletic than we ever realised...

According to a study by Macmillan Cancer Support, millions of us may actually be walking the equivalent of a full marathon – that's over 26 miles, by the way – every single fortnight as we commute to and from work.

Say what!?

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Apparently, one in nine workers clock up 40 minutes of walking every day, including heading to the train station and trudging up escalators. This equates to an average of 2.6 miles, which in turn adds up to a whopping 26 miles over two weeks at the office. Impressive.

The survey of over 1,200 commuters showed that the average worker spends 28 minutes on foot every day, including eight minutes standing up. So much for sedentary office jobs, ey?

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Our journeys to and from work are so active that one in five of us break out in a sweat, while one in eight find ourselves out of breath.

And, in fact, we're so knackered afterwards that most of us then go on to spend nearly two and a half hours watching TV.

'Many people dream of being able to do a marathon and this shows commuters are actually much more active than they may realise,' says Macmillan Cancer Support's national events manager Lisa Shorter in a release.

'But after an energetic commute, we can see many workers are spending the rest of their day sat down, both at work and at home.

'We're encouraging commuters to build on their, perhaps unexpected, daily exercise with OutRun May by setting themselves a goal of miles to run across the 31 days and achieving it one run at a time,' she added.

'If workers can do a marathon every fortnight without even realising it, we can't wait to see what they can do when they set themselves a goal.'

Well, we for one are thrilled to hear we're such secret athletes!

Macmillan Cancer Support to encourage people to get more active for OutRun May – a challenge to set a personalised target of miles to walk or run throughout the month to raise money for charity.

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